THEATER REVIEW : PCPA’s ‘Alice’ Takes the Middle Road Through Wonderland : Production steers clear of either filling the show with impenetrable whimsy or dumbing it down into sanitized mush.

I don’t know about you, but Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books always struck me as disturbing in a way unlike other popular children’s stories.

Babies turning into pigs, cute oyster families devoured en masse, a bloodthirsty Queen shouting “Off with her head!” and a recurring theme of punishment for unspecified crimes are among the nastier elements in Carroll’s fantasy world.

The violence Alice encountered in Wonderland is hardly unique among fairy tales, of course, but there’s an outright cruelty in the relentless intellectual gamesmanship, which Carroll, a clearly repressed Oxford mathematician and deacon, inflicted on his young protagonist.

No 10-year-old child, from Carroll’s Victorian England to the present, could contend with Carroll’s dense tangle of obscure puns, mathematical puzzles, and social satire--on which the “Alice” stories are built--even adults require a heavily annotated edition.

And a lot of the humor is at little Alice’s expense, not unlike the taunts one might hear directed at a disabled person.

So bringing “Alice In Wonderland” to the stage as family entertainment is a risky undertaking. A too-faithful rendering of Lewis Carroll’s original “Alice” stories brings us face to face with the author’s nearly impenetrable cerebral bullying, which sails as far over the heads of children today as it did over poor Alice’s.

So it’s very much to the credit of director Jack Shouse that his PCPA Theaterfest production manages to steer a middle course between these pitfalls.

Lively performances from the entire 24-member ensemble maintain a suitable sense of fun and adventure, no matter how incomprehensible the dialogue. Especially engaging are Charlie Bachmann’s hilarious emotional ping-pongs as the Queen of Hearts.

Though brushing the upper limits of the Alice age range, Tarah Flanagan is well-cast in the title role--all blond curls and youthful twinkle, she could easily have stepped right out of a Tenniel illustration.

Director Shouse’s careful coaching of his young cast in the complex meanings of Carroll’s dialogue has paid off with knowledgeable delivery, and subtle staging choices provide additional sustenance for mental appetites.

Some acknowledged menace would give meaning to the play’s climactic moment--when she finally tells her tormentors, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards.” The line should reflect some of the conquered fear that comes with growing up a little, but the Alice we leave behind is unchanged from the self-absorbed little girl who began her journey.

Which leaves us still searching of a purpose to all this--an outcome that would have given Carroll, absurdist that he was, the last laugh.

Details

* WHAT: “Alice in Wonderland.”

* WHEN: Through Dec. 19, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m., 2 p.m. matinees Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

* WHERE: Marian Theatre, Allan Hancock College, 800 S. College Drive, Santa Maria.

* COST: $12-$17.

* FYI: For reservations or further information, call (800) 549-7272.